Doctors' morale 'at all time low'

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In his speech to the annual consultants' conference, Dr Jonathan Fielden, chairman of the British Medical Association's consultants' committee, will warn incoming prime minister Gordon Brown that he risks destroying the NHS if he fails to listen and act upon widespread concerns about health policy and funding cuts.

Dr Fielden will say: "The profession is angry, it is angry with managers, with employers, but most of all we are all angry with the Government for a woeful dereliction of duty, towards patients, towards the profession and towards the future.

"The profession is angry because of this government's mis-handling of the health service and has lost all confidence that the government can solve the problems it has created."

He will say "political meddling has brought the NHS to its knees" and urge Mr Brown: "Unshackle the profession, give us back the health service and we will rebuild it.

"Fail to do so and you will rightly have a long lasting legacy to be condemned for destroying the best piece of social capital the country has ever had."

During his speech at Conference Centre, Church House, Dean's Yard, Westminster, London, on Wednesday, Dr Fielden will criticise the Government by saying: "Policy so far is rightly criticised for lacking strategic direction. Pouring out initiative after initiative. Taking good principles and tying them up with bureaucracy and political necessity, killing off the benefit and leaving a distorted skeleton behind."

He will say the creation of an internal market has "redirected billions of pounds away from improving efficiencies into poor value for money schemes".

However, claims that Government reforms have brought the NHS "to its knees" were dismissed as "completely absurd" by Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt.

Ms Hewitt said the accusations from Dr Fielden were undermined by research which showed patient satisfaction was rising. Although there had been "real problems", such as with the junior doctors' training application system which had affected morale, overall things were getting better, she insisted.